Search Engine - A stubborn lunatic’s guide to making great art

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

25 years ago, The Sopranos, the best television show ever created, premiered. This week, a new documentary called Wise Guy asks the question: how did a show considered so risky & uncommercial even get made? We’re interviewing Wise Guy director Alex Gibney about that question, and about how stubborn lunatics like him and David Chase got to make the projects they wanted to make. Incognito Mode, our ad-free, no-rerun, bonus episode feed. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to search engine. I'm PJ Vote. No question too big, no question too small, no question too repetitively echoing in my head seven times a day. Okay, I've been telling stories professionally for 16 years. I complain about work like anybody else, but the more honest part of me always knows that really I'm getting away with something. Being paid to make art you love is as close to a scam as you can run without being in legal danger. It feels impossible that this is all true. And the thing is, some years, it wasn't true. When I first started in audio, podcasting didn't really exist. It was radio. And there would have been no business model to support a show like the one you're listening to. I've been here long enough that I've watched the business model arrive.

I worked for a few years where there was tons of money in podcasting, and I'm here in the era after where a low tide ebbs again. The state of things comes up on the show sometimes because one of the biggest questions that actually preoccupies me day to day is how are we going to get people to pay for this shit? Free art, pay what you want is a funny thing to build a life on. It preoccupies me. And I know it preoccupies me because lately when I see something good, a movie, a book, a live event, I don't think so much about the creative choices enabling it. I think, how is this getting funded? Even what does the lifestyle of the person who made this look like,

that it permits them to make art? Do they have kids? Where do they live? This documentary came out this week called Wise Guy, which is about The Sopranos, my favorite TV show, maybe my favorite piece of narrative art. And watching it, it felt like the documentary was asking the same question that has been haunting me. How do you make something personal and important

when the entire system is conspiring to keep that stuff off the air? The documentary appropriately is by the director Alex Gibney, who has spent his career defiantly making non-commercial films. He made Going Clear, critiquing one of the more lawsuit-happy groups in America, Scientologists. He won an Oscar for his bleak but fascinating documentary about American torture, taxied to the dark side. He also works in the same office as me,

so sometimes we see each other at the coffee machine. I still don't know how to work. I wanted to ask Alex Gibney how to work that coffee machine, Just kidding. I want to ask him how he's figured out how to make a career doing risky, creative work that other people pay for.

And also about what he learned from interviewing Sopranos creator David Chase, one of the people who most successfully made something personal and strange while still connecting with a massive audience. Alex, welcome to search engine. Hey, thanks, BJ. Good to be here. So this is my theory for the structure of our episode.

The Sopranos was a show about observing decline. The pilot of the Sopranos opens with this monologue from Tony's soprano about how America is in decline, how he was born too late and he missed the good old days. You are documenting how the story of the soprano is being made is a story of a different kind of decline, like a TV show from this blip of a moment where television shows that were that good could get on the air. Your project is a documentary. The documentary business, many people have observed, is in its own state of decline. And then I wanted to interview you about all this on

a podcast, podcasting. In decline. Very much. And then my plan is at the end of this interview will probably die. Suicide. Yes. The Japanese have a term for that Shinju. It's a mutual suicide, right. That sounds like a lovely. That's what we're going to teach listeners today has how to do Shinju.

Does this sound good? Do you agree generally with our premise yet? I do. I do. Okay, so my first question is just like, the way Tony Suprano feels about America, to what degree do you feel that way about documentary film in America? Well, at the moment, I kind of feel the way Tony does. I think the golden age of documentary, which was proclaimed maybe even as recently as like four years ago,

now it feels like it's got a lot of rust on it. I wanted to rewind a little bit before the rest, before the recent golden era. I asked Alex to tell me the story of how he first fell in love with documentary film, one of show business's less profitable avenues. Alex's story begins decades ago, the first era of his career. career, which he spent in the creative wilderness. He grew up in New England and moved to California in late 1970s to go to film school at UCLA.

So I made documentaries in film school, and one of the ones I made in film school, I actually got on TV, which was back then, you know, hugely successful. But then I went through a long period where I was underemployed, even after I had kids. And if I was going in to look for a job, my wife would always say, honey, listen, if they ask you what you do, don't say you make documentaries. Because then you'll never get hired for whatever it is you want to do because you couldn't get hired to make documentaries. Oh, they would see it as like, why would we hire you even for like a commercial or something

like that? Right, because you're interested in documentaries and documentaries is spinach and nobody cares about them. Why did you like them? I liked them because, I mean, when I was going to college, you'd see them at film societies alongside the feature films. So to me, they were movies. Like, you know, give me shelter, documentary, great documentary, really entertaining.

And then Fred Wiseman, I always liked his films and Barbara Cople, Harlan County, USA, Woodstock. I mean, they're documentaries, right? So I thought they were great, but there came a period, and particularly the period of cable TV, was a period where channels were like, you were supposed to be able to recognize them as you went up and down the dial with your clicker before there were too many channels to use a clicker. Yeah. So that if you went by A&E, it's like, oh, that's A&E, because you can automatically tell, like, in three seconds what the channel is.

And so documentaries just became either something that was dull that was on PBS, even though they weren't always dull on PBS, or that was just a cable channel documentary, which meant it was just more fodder. They were all stamped with a kind of corporate, seal. There was no personality to them. Like the documentaries that I liked, like the ones I just talked about, even the cinema verite ones where you don't hear a narrator or anything, you know, the cinema verity filmmaker saw themselves as visual poets. Yeah.

So there was a mark of personality to them. That's what was intriguing and engaging. They were engaging with real life, but it wasn't some stentorian narrator telling you the way the world was. So you're showing up at a moment where you are feeling a little bit Tony Suprano-esque in that you're missing a slightly bygone era and you have a vision for what you want to make, but where the landscape that you first arrived to was not a landscape that was conducive to it. That's right. There was a lot of years in the wilderness I spent doing other stuff, whether it was doing some journalism or I cut exploitation trailers for a while, you know, all sorts of stuff. Did you feel like a person who'd, like, fallen in love with the wrong thing? Yeah. I had.

And my wife was particularly convinced I had fallen in love with the wrong thing. What about the post office? The regular hours? You know, it was like... Because I was always... I had a zillion projects. Yeah. Right?

But the projects never went anywhere. Alex's time in the creative wilderness, his post office era lasted for years. The 1980s bled into the 1990. In the late 90s, he has this moment that really helps him understand the art form and the industry he's pledged himself to that helps him understand why it is he's been so stuck. That was the period when I was scuffling up in Canada trying to make something. I was trying to make it for the Disney Channel, and then the Disney Channel had a change of heart about what it was going to do because Michael Eisner was caught trying to make a slave ride. Wait, what happened?

Okay, so the Disney channel was going to change to become an Americana channel. Okay. And as part of that, the first show, this is going to be my big break, was going to be a doc series that I invented called the 50s, based on a book by David Halberstam, called the 50s. And it was cool. It was like toe-tapping music, but it was serious stuff, but told in a very entertaining way.

Somewhere along the line, Michael Eisner, as part of this Americana project, decided that he was going to build an Americana museum, sort of like Disney World. Yeah. But he ran into two problems. One was he was going to build it by a Civil War battlefield. And two, it was discovered that one of the highlights of the park was going to be a slave ride.

Like an amusement park ride. To show you what it would have been like to have been a slave, yeah. That's an error in judgment. Whoops. A quick tangent, but I think it's worth it. This is a quote from Disney's Bob Weiss, the park's creative director at the time. Quote, the park will deal with the highs and lows. We want to make you feel what it was like to be a slave and what it was like to escape through the Underground Railroad.

That quote inspired more public outrage. Disney CEO Michael Eisner jumped in to defend the amusement park ride, saying, quote, if people think we will back off, they are mistaken. People were not mistaken. Disney did back off. describing not just the ride, but the entire park, and ultimately the Americana TV channel. Executives, like the ones who made this series of decisions, are the people who control the money

that determines what someone like Alex Gibney is allowed to make. That's just the reality we live in. In this case, though, Alex's project wasn't actually killed. It was just moved over to a different channel. All of this is a long way of saying that when it came time for the premiere, the 50s, my co-creator Tracy Dolbin I went down and at some point during the big party

which was at the Hard Rock Cafe they said and now we'd like to introduce the people who were responsible for this series and I had you know bled this series for like three years you know move to Canada in order to be able to do it and so Tracy and I are puffing ourselves up

and then they proceeded to introduce the advertisers like the execs that A&E didn't really even understand why we were there. Like, why would you bother to show up? You're just widgets. You know, the people who are really important are the advertisers. It's like the paper towel company. Yeah. So what did you understand in that moment? Well, I understood that TV isn't about the conversation between a creator and a viewer. You're about renting viewers to advertisers. Right. And that the creators aren't really creators at all. You're just providing the catnip

that, you know, is just tasty enough. It's good enough to lure you in so that you'll stay for half an hour and please the advertisers. And the last thing they want is any kind of personality or originality. You thought that the ads were what was interrupting your program and what you understood in that moment

is that you were the stuff in between. Correct. Alex learned the reason why it was so hard to make the complicated stories he wanted to make. His real job. As his bosses understood it, wasn't to find audiences who wanted to be challenged. It was to make inoffensive mass market content to put in between commercials. Alex Gibney was not happy to learn that in some people's eyes,

he was really there to sell paper towels. For the record, this podcast is ad-supported. I actually feel mostly okay about it. When we're working on a story, the person whose happiness I think about is the listeners, not the advertisers. I've never had to worry about not covering a topic because it was going to upset like an internet-based mattress company. I do think the thing everyone's trying to figure out is,

how do I make the thing I want to make and find all the weirdos out there who might enjoy it? And for 20 years, the audience that would enjoy and pay for Alex's work, they existed, but he couldn't prove it. His big break would come in the early 2000s, when he'd just turned 50 years old. What happened was that a few stylish, voicy documentaries broke out his hits.

Super Size Me, Bowling for Columbine. Films like those, plus the rise of reality TV, meant that executives warmed to the idea that viewers might find unscripted stories interesting. For Alex, who'd spent decades subsisting mainly on hope, this moment was a nice surprise. It felt awesome. And not only did they write bigger and better checks for it,

but, you know, sometimes you could take a swing and make it for a little bit of money and sell it for a lot. And there was a tremendous amount of excitement because it was about how do you do something weird and original that was seen as a market benefit. What were the kinds of things that you made in that moment that you feel like they were surprised to be allowed to make?

Enron. Enron. Who makes a film about accounting? In 2005, Alex directed a film called Enron, the smartest guy's name. in the room. It was a documentary about accounting, but not just accounting. It's the story of the Enron scandal, where executives at a power company used fraudulent accounting to make it seem like they were making tons of money while hiding their mounting debt. Along the way,

they wantonly committed memorable crimes. Some of those crimes actually caught on tape aired in the documentary. Hey, this is David up at Enron. Uh-huh. There's not much demand for power at all, and if we set it down, Could you bring it back up in three or four hours? Oh, yeah. Why don't you just go ahead and shut her down then if that's okay? In this scene, Alex uses audio that he got of Enron employees intentionally creating a power outage in California just to juice demand.

I want you guys to get a little creative. Okay. And come up with a reason to go down. Like a forced outage type thing. Right. It's a stunning picture of a company with the power to just manipulate strangers' lives at will. It plays like a Hollywood movie. For Alex, this is the end.

exact kind of film that for years he could not have dreamed of getting a chance to make. Did you feel like I can't believe I'm getting away with this? Kind of, because when I made it, even in the first five minutes of that film, there's a lot going on. There's a recreation of a suicide. There's a strange Tom White's

song called What's He Building in there? It was an odd and idiosyncratic film in many ways. Now, it was about something that was famous. Yeah. You know, the collapse of Enron. But I kept asking people, kind of like David Chase kept asking himself, As a cinematographer told me, it's like, is anybody going to watch this shit?

And that's what I kept wondering, like, is it going to get into Sundance? Like, is anybody going to watch this? You had the feeling of MI2 far out on a ledge, even if it was creatively fulfilling. Right. And so that's 2005. Enron, it did hit a cultural nerve. It did. It was like what I called a taxi driver film.

Like, you'd be riding at a taxi, and the taxi driver would be saying, hey, man, have you seen that Enron movie? Enron was nominated for an Oscar. And in the aftermath, Alex's career entered this new phase where people with money now trusted him. And of course, he cashed that capital in to make an even more seemingly uncommercial film. This one was called Taxi to the Dark Side. It's a documentary about an Afghan taxi driver who was beaten to death by American interrogators. Alex says he made the movie in part to broadcast this observation about human nature that he'd noticed. He learned that the American interrogators had kept torturing their prisoner, even after they knew that there was no intelligence to gain from him.

So there was something terrifying at the heart of it that said something very deep and disturbing about human nature. And also it was told us a story about a poor innocent who got caught in a machine, you know, of cruelty. I feel like one of the network executives because it's like you're talking about the actual heart and meaning. of these stories, and I'm like, what were the economic conditions like over and over again? Well, I think there was always this thinking, which was ironic in this case, like, if you made something really well, you might win awards. Right. Now, awards are sometimes economically viable, and sometimes they're good for business long-term.

Yeah. And that's why interesting movies still get made sometimes because people are looking for awards. Oh, this might win an award. And in fact, that one did. It won an Oscar for a big award. Yeah. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but before this conversation, I never really got the point of awards for art. The idea that you pay money to submit your work to be judged by your peers has always smelled a little bit to me like a vanity scam.

But for somebody like Alex, awards have been vital. A movie about torture might never make a ton of box office cash, but it can win an Oscar, which can be its own motivation for a funder to put their money in. The thing sweeping his career forward now wasn't just a greater cultural appreciation for artsy power-interrogating documentaries. It was that the business model kept changing in ways that favored creators like Alex. DVDs arrived, allowing filmmakers to charge consumers more for home movies than they had with VHS tapes. And then DVDs were replaced by internet streaming companies. In the battle to be the next Netflix, streamers spent heavily on new work, including splashy documentaries, which were a relatively cheap way

to signal you were a premium channel. Plus, in the streaming era, a film didn't need to be such a big hit because the companies were better at algorithmically targeting little sub-communities that were likely to enjoy a specific film. They had a philosophy, which was communities of interest.

And so long as you could keep those people subscribing to your service, that was good, right? And they would be super happy. Now, other people might come over to it, but if people weren't that interested, maybe they wouldn't come to it. So it was just a way of getting some people hugely excited about a film, as opposed to trying to get everybody willing to buy that soggy croissant. Right, because the soggy croissant is always going to be, like,

I think David Foster Wallace wrote that we're unique in our high-brow tastes, but we tend to be common in our low-brow taste. Like, everybody's curious about a murder. Everybody's curious on some level about a celebrity, or most people are. But if you can target small, passionate audiences, you can target them in more specific ways. Like, you can make things that are more idiosyncratic

or personal or inventive or whatever. Right, and you're also not afraid when it comes to certain subjects to offend people. So what's the point at which the streaming age starts to feel, I don't want to say bad, that's like such a simple way to put it, but what is the part where, or the moment where the limitations of the new model

start to reveal themselves to you as a filmmaker? I think, you know, I really do think it starts with a pandemic. Really? That recently. Yeah. I think they may have been warning signs about it before it, but the pandemic really does it because the pandemic takes away theatrical. And theatrical, even in the small indie world, you know, people would go out to those films. They would pop up.

I mean, as a viewer and someone who is completely unsophisticated, my understanding of the film industry, I don't see that much stuff in theaters, but I do use stuff being in theaters as a sign that I should pay attention to it. Right, right. Yeah. And the way you say it is exactly the way it worked in economic terms. In other words, theatrical distribution, particularly for independent films, was almost always a lost leader. Yeah. It usually didn't pay for itself in theaters, but it was a signal that it was good.

And also the film festival world, all of that, and then people would show up and bid. But then, you know, so the pandemic happened, suddenly theaters flatline. Yeah. Nobody's going to theaters during a pandemic. And also, there starts to be a huge consolidation in the streaming industry or streaming cable industry, because now streamers and cable casters are starting to be one. And now that they have more power, they just make the cheapest thing. They can make a product that's a little bit worse, but where they claw back a little bit more money, et cetera. Yeah.

That's right. And so then what does it look like for you? Like when you're trying to make something that is... Well, then it becomes harder because, you know, you go to people and you say, I want to one streamer. with a film I had called Citizen K, which was kind of a look at Putin's Russia through this oligarch named Mikhail Horikovsky, who then, when things turned in 2003,

spent 10 years in the Gulag. And I went to one streamer, and the streamer said, you know, this is a good film, but we don't want to offend Russia. Really? Yeah, we don't want to offend Russia. Okay. Wow.

Okay, no taken. You know, because you can see the commercial considerations, particularly in a global economy, begin to take over. What Alex is saying is that in the previous more competitive era, some upstart streamer may have been willing to take on the risk of offending Russia. But now, in this less competitive moment, with fewer people funding work like his, the system's overall risk tolerance goes down.

Another side effect of a system that wants less risky movies is that a lot of the biggest documentaries in the past couple of years have just been adoring profiles of celebrities who frequently get a lot of creative input and sometimes even final cut. And I think in a way it's kind of obvious why that is.

If you want a big audience, you make a list of the top 20 celebrities and you think if we do a Taylor Swift documentary, we're going to get a big audience. because her audience is big. Right. So you're just borrowing Taylor Swift's audience. The difference is that for a network or a channel

or even a streamer early on, that they would have editorial control. That would be a good thing. That showed a dedication to certain journalistic and editorial principles, right? You never give the subject control. Not anymore. Gone, poof.

And I think that to some extent, you think to yourself, well, okay, Like, I've made commercials before. Like, when I make a commercial for a client, I don't expect to have editorial control. Because it's a commercial. Yeah. But that's the problem.

It's like there's this netherworld at the moment where the celebrity and the channel wants the viewer to believe that it's a documentary. Yeah. One in fact a commercial. So when, to talk about this recent project, When HBO comes to you and says, we want you to make a film about David Chase,

and that's about the Sopranos, which is one of their properties, were you worried that what they wanted was that they wanted? Yes, I was. And look, HBO has been pretty fearless over the years in terms of their willingness to do tough stuff. But it just felt to me like, I love the show, but do I want to do like a special on the Sopranos? It didn't feel that interesting to me.

But then when I sat down at David and met him, He was a fascinating character, but also I realized, whoa, he went through back then what I and many others are going through right now. The battle. The battle. Meaning, how do you get something personal and important on when everything about the system is conspiring to keep it off? How do you make something personal and important when everything about the system is conspiring to keep it off? Everything about the system is conspiring to keep it off. After a short break, the story of a person who did that maybe the most successfully of anyone,

a guy with a tortured relationship with his mother who wanted the whole world to find that drama interesting. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors out there whose job is to help your clients keep more of what they earn, Vanguard is here to help you with that. Vanguard is slashing fees again, this time for more than 50 of its funds. That's on top of big fee cuts they gave last year to investors in 87 of their funds. In an increasingly high-priced world, Vanguard is staying true to excellence without expense. With Vanguard, your clients get access to sophisticated, active, and index bond funds at industry-leading low costs,

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All investing is subject to risk, Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsor jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C.

According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back to the show. So Alex Gibney, a talented and stubborn man who figured out how to make personal art

in a system designed to snuff it out. His latest film is about David Chase, a talented and stubborn man who figured out how to make personal art in a system designed to snuff it out. Chase was a TV writer who had had a successful career commercially in the 80s and most of the 90s, but who now felt profoundly frustrated

by the limitations of the form. What is the process by which the supremac goes from an idea in David Chase's head to a television show on HBO? OK, so David was just getting tired of doing the TV thing. I mean, he had a relatively successful career. He was a showrunner.

at Northern Exposure, which is a very successful show. And he had done some other ones in the past. But he had always wanted to make movies. Yeah. That's really what he wanted to do. And this was like his last go-round. He had some money put away. He was just going to write spec scripts

and see if he could get a movie made. So it was like the last roundup. So David Chase, frustrated, done with television, convinced that the era is just not one that will let him make work he finds. interesting. He figures he probably needs to switch to movies. He has this one idea he wants to try. This is a clip from the documentary, Wise Guy. The voice you'll hear belongs to David Chase. For years, everybody told me that I had to write something about my mother. She was so out there

and so funny. My wife, Denise, was the first one to say that. And then everybody was saying, you got to write something about your mother. In the documentary, David Chase tells him, me about how a colleague, Robin Green, also pushed him to try to build a story around his difficult mother. In her pitch, though, it was more autobiographical. Robin said, you should write the show about your mother and a TV producer. And I thought, I'm who's going to watch that? But maybe if he was like a really badass guy, maybe that would work. Was the bad guy already a mobster? Yeah. I wanted to get De Niro and Ann Bancro. At first, thought of it as a feature.

It was the story that actually was the first season. It was about a mobster that goes to a shrink after having panic attacks. And so he writes this script, and he decides to make the protagonist a mobster, Tony Soprano, who's got a problem with his mother, and in fact, his mother wants to kill him. And he writes the script, and it's really good.

And everybody agrees it's really good, and he starts to take it around. But at the time, TV was dominated by the three, possibly four networks. and they were interested in kind of lowest common denominator programming and sort of routinized programming. So he would go from place to place and they all turned him down. And Les Moonves, who was at, you know, a famous executive at CBS said, you know, this mobster stuff is really good. But, you know, are you wedded to the therapy?

And Dave was like, yeah, I'm wedded to the therapy. I guess you'd have to say since it was the central engine of the entire. show. Yeah. Right? So everybody wanted him to do something that was the cliche, and he wanted to do something that was completely different. And it wasn't until the script landed at HBO, where they said,

whoa, this is new and original and different. That was it. It was different. And HBO was looking to be different. It's not TV. It's HBO. Right. HBO had existed as a cable network since the 1970s.

But in the 1990s, the channel was trying to transform its. At the time, most HBO subscribers were there to watch movies and boxing matches. But HBO, like Netflix would 20 years later, wanted to start making more of its own stuff, to make a real name for itself. A traditional TV network may have wanted David Chase to make the safest, most cost-effective version of The Sopranos, but HBO was competing on quality. There might be a lesson here about golden ages, that if you're someone who makes stuff, One of the best places you could find yourself is at an upstart company trying to compete against the establishment.

So with HBO, I mean, they were making money through subscriptions and they were showing movies that they would license. They had dipped their tone to series, like with Larry Sanders and with Oz and others. And they were thinking, this is pretty good. Maybe we should try a bigger swing. Yeah. And so they were looking for something. So moment and different economic model because they don't need to have a big ratings winner. They just need some people who love a show.

That's good for them. And then if you love different shows, that's okay, because this group loves this show, and they'll subscribe, and this other group loves this show, and they'll subscribe. Good. Everybody doesn't have to love every show. So poise for that moment. And then he walks into it with his script to HBO,

and they're asking the questions where everything is upside down, instead of saying, like, okay, so we'll shoot it in L.A. and we'll do second unit in Jersey, right? because that'll save money. They were like, you're going to shoot everything in Jersey, right? That's what David said. He's like, whoa, I felt like I had landed

in an alternate universe. Like, they were going to let me do anything I wanted. And they pretty much did. Yeah. David felt he had landed in Bizarro World. It was like where the execs were encouraging him to engage his own creativity and to lean in to all the things that were important to him,

as opposed to, you know, invest in the stereotypes that had become so successful. The Sopranos was not a confected corporate product. I mean, it wasn't at all in terms of its artistry and all of that, but it didn't come about because David thought, how can I make a lot of money? Yeah. Came about because David was like,

I'm obsessed with my mother. I mean, there's something funny about the idea that millions of dollars were spent and made, for someone to just kind of have their drink. To work out their own personal shit about their mother. I totally agree. And that to me was the beauty of the moment. You came across a network.

It was like, fuck it, let's roll the dice. Yeah. You know, what have we got to lose? But a lot. But a lot. I mean, it is true, and they were scared, too. I mean, because after they shot the pilot, they waited six, seven, eight, nine months before they made the decision to,

go ahead and order the series? They were terrified. Right. Because, like, how can you have a mobster who's the protagonist? Yeah. Somebody who kills people for a living

is going to be the protagonist of this family drama, right? And they were really nervous about it. And one argument that David had with the creative executives at HBO was over Tony killing somebody on camera. And they were worried

that they would turn viewers off. But David convinced them. They said, look, we're making a show about a mobster. If he doesn't kill the guy who was a snitch, then what are we doing? We're just making bullshit. And so they move forward. You actually, in the movie,

you play a clip from that scene, which is kind of famous. It's episode five for season. Tony Supranosso takes his daughter Meadow on a college tour, And it's this moment where you're really seeing him as a sweet dad instead of as a mob boss. How to go? We got a 48 to 52 male-female ratio, which is great. Strong liberal arts program in this cool and art center for music.

Usual programs abroad are China, India. You're just applying here. Already you're leaving? It's an option, dad, junior year. And then while he's on this college tour with his daughter, he happens to run into a guy who's in the Witness Protection Program, who had actually snitched on Associates of Tonys. And so it is like a moment where you feel the show challenging you as a viewer because you're seeing him in this very domestic state, sweet dad guy, and then you're watching him plot the murder of this guy.

The kill itself is very violent. Very violent and grisly. Yeah, he literally chokes him to death with a wire. Good morning, rat. Who are you? What is this? Don't make me laugh. You pimp, you fuck.

Teddy, there must be something we could do. Tony. It's Tony, you fuck. You know how much trouble you're in now? You took it off. And you broke it. I'd vaguely heard about the argument behind this scene, but the two things that surprised me

that I understood in a different or deeper way watching your film. One is you have the HBO executive who's like, yeah, yeah, we totally, we're telling him to take this out. Like, you actually, you never see the suits. Like, people always talk about the notes from the suits, whatever, but the suits never show up

and say, this is what I was thinking and why. So you have that. But then also they talk about how they did say, like, hey, if you're insisting on doing this, Like, we can be convinced. We can be convinced by the argument that otherwise he's bullshit and the show is bullshit, and you have to do this for the show to have integrity and for people to care about it. But could you make the guy he's going to kill a little bit more sort of...

Malevolent. Yeah, and they do. There's this, like, moment where they're in the parking lot of the motel, and you see the guy and he pulls out a pistol. He's in darkness. He's aiming at Tony and his daughter. And then he realizes there's other people in the motel, and he can't get away with it, and he puts the gun down.

But so as a viewer, you're feeling a bit more like... like, okay, this guy, he's threatened him, whatever. And it was funny watching that moment, I was like, oh, you know, maybe the network was right. Like maybe the push and pull between the artist and the people who stand for skittish audiences, maybe it had produced something that worked. Yeah, I think that's right.

And that's the best thing often about notes in general. You know, sometimes particularly reaction, not so much the prescription, but the reaction to, like, this doesn't feel right. It's sometimes worth listening to. There's a moment in your film where you're interviewing the writers of the sopranos. They say that they don't think the show could be made

or made in the same way today. It would be too controversial. What do you make of that? I think they were talking about political correctness. You know, there was a willingness to say things that were downright offensive and also a willingness, even in the writer's room, to get ugly,

to talk about stuff in a way. that was brutally honest and would reveal about themselves stuff that wasn't particularly elevating or inspiring, maybe just the opposite. In Wise Guy, the Sopranos writers talk about the freedom and tension that came with inventing all these unlikable characters and then imbueing these unlikable characters

with attributes that sometimes came from the writers themselves. You know, look at somebody like Uncle Jr. or Tony or Pauly Walnuts. I mean, these are like petty heart. horrible people. So you felt free to talk about anything you wanted. It was all just, hey, there's a writer's room. We're writing about bad people. Bad people do bad things, and we got to access those parts of ourself. I mean, we said things that nowadays, you know, would be frowned upon. We could have been mistaken for being racist, sexist, you name it, is, you know. We considered having an assistant in there for a while. and realize we couldn't do that. But that to me was actually one of the great lessons of doing the show.

It's like when you start to presensor yourselves all the time, we've all got weird, dark, inappropriate feelings or thoughts, and to the extent that they're routinely repressed, they'll come out in unexpected and, sometimes dangerous ways. You know, what was that line about if only Hitler's art teacher was a little

bit more attentive? You could have just made some offensive paintings. Yeah. The terrifying beauty of the show was that these people were so complex.

Yeah. They were both so charming and brutal. And one of the things that they made a point of during the making of the show, which I thought was so great, is whenever it seemed that the characters

were becoming too likable, particularly the mobsters, were becoming too likable, they would have them do something brutal. Yeah. Just to remind you, because also in the back of his mind, you know, David is making this show,

which is a character drama about a family, but it's also a commentary about America and the brutality of America and the rapaciousness with which character. capitalism sort of, you know, choose people up and spits them out. And the Sopranos is kind of the logical extension of that scene in The Godfather, you know, where they're all sitting around the table asking the Godfather to share all the bought politicians and police officers.

And it's sort of we're willing to pay a fee. After all, we're not communists here. Right? But it's a brutal commentary on capitalism and America and the cruelty of the country. So all those things are going through their heads, and they're willing to be ugly. And I think that's what people ended up loving the show for, is that didn't pull punches

and suddenly the uncomfortable conversations that you shied away from because you might offend somebody. They were engaging in those conversations on screen, and that's what great art does, is it allows you to get into areas that maybe you're not permitted to as part of your daily life. Yeah, and it's funny.

it's like, what's so brilliant about it being a mob show is that, one, once there's guns and murder, you can trick people into paying attention to family dynamics, which is part of what he wants to talk about. But also, these writers can take ideas that they have or parts of themselves that might be uncomfortable. But now, if it's coming out of, like, the mouth of a murdering mobster, that's a context in which we're willing to sit with those ideas without worrying if we're hearing art from a bad person. That's right. But at the same time, because they're all coming out of their personal experiences. I mean, it was supposed to be about David's mother.

And then all the writers found out that they had major issues with their mothers. So it ends up being, you know, a lot of this experience ends up being universal. I think the other thing that makes this show so successful, too, is that, you know, there are a lot of conversations that are extremely unironic and they're very funny for it because these brutal mobsters are having very sensitive discussions about how their feelings are hurt, or should I buy flowers for my wife on her anniversary? Stuff like that.

You know, normally, in most mob movies, you see the action. Yeah. You don't see the day-to-day interactions where you're trying to figure out whether or not you should show up for your son's soccer practice. After a short break, Alex Kidney, someone who has survived decades, all these different eras of technological and business shifts,

who's learned both from his own work and from the work of people like David Chase, his advice on how to keep going during tough times. Springstiles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on Raggedon, Made Well, Vince, All Saints, and more of your favorites. How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Why do we rock? For the hottest deal.

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No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks co-pilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs to help him see if he can afford it. Co-pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work.

Now, Hank says, right out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365Copilot.com slash work. David Chase has said that this moment where the Sopranos was allowed to happen was a blimp. Like whatever window that opened for a moment that he snuck through, he doesn't think that window is open anymore. Do you agree with that?

Well, it's not open under the current system. So something new is going to have to come along to blow it open again. Because HBO also, remember, was a different kind of a system. And it was coming up and they knew they had to do something different or they weren't going to get anywhere. I mean, what's the point of trying to become another network? If you're far behind in a sailing race, it doesn't make any sense to follow the same wind

that's already got those boats that are way ahead of you. You tack on a different course and hope to catch a different kind of a wind. So at the moment, it's pretty bleak. for trying to do personal art that's going to connect with viewers. But the hope is, the hope at the bottom of Pandora's box

after a lot of bad shit has come out, is that there is a new distribution mechanism out there that will allow this relationship once again to find a way. You know, and it's kind of what you see happening in journalism. Like the substack model is interesting because suddenly you see some people are making bank on substack by going directly to their readers.

Interesting. That was the hope in podcasts for a while to. And actually, I think podcasts, you know, some over time still find a way to get audiences, but it's not as easy as it seemed like it was going to be at first. Yeah. I mean, I think in podcasting certainly, there was a moment where it's like you want the moments

where the people with money kind of don't know what they're doing. And they're just like betting on a lot of stuff and they're not tracking things very carefully. And what gets harder if you're trying to make something interesting is either they've figured out what works and they just want to do that over and over again. That's right. Or they're scared. And I think right now is a moment where they've both figured out which things work and they're scared. Right. And also, you know, some key players in the distribution universe are tech players who have other businesses.

Yes. You know, if I'm Apple, do I want to do anything that's going to offend somebody? And so they might not buy an iPhone or an iPad? And if I'm Amazon, do I want to do something that might offend somebody who might buy their sneakers on Amazon? Yeah, and we're never going to be a big enough part of their business to be worth that much headache. And so I think it makes sense. And I don't think they think of it that way. Like, I don't have conversations.

No, I mean, I think they think, let's do stuff that's entertaining. and they hire executives who've been in the business before. But over time, tendencies emerge. Yeah. And the tendencies are, let's do the thing that worked the last time. That was pretty good. Yeah. Or do you want to do the thing that might not work,

and then you have to have a meeting. And, like, the meeting goes badly. Right. But it's funny, you know, what I get from this conversation with you, it's so funny to compare podcasting to film and television because they're, like, cities and we're just, like, some little, like, highway down. But there's this real sense of doom and good.

gloom and end days and whatever, like, because there was, like, such a surge and then such a crash. But hearing the way you look at your industry and look at adjacent industry, it feels almost more like a sailor looking at tides, you know? Yes, I think that's right. And you're looking over into the distance for that swell that's going to be different. And I think it'll come, because it's always been like that. You know, you go back to the 20s and the 30s and the 40s. Think about what? radio producers must have thought with the advent of television.

Yeah. It's over for us. It's over. Right. Yeah. No, and I felt, you know, when I got into radio, it was like, there was public radio and there was some great programs,

but I felt like, what are you doing? Like, this is a stupid thing to love. You're just a person out of time. I didn't get in thinking anything good would ever happen. There was something I heard the other night. There was, I went to a benefit for this small little outfit up in Maine,

which is a place called the Carpenters Boat Shop, where, you know, people who have found themselves, you know, betwixt in between, spend time at a place where they learn how to build boats. Okay. Cool. But this guy who's been doing that or, you know, who founded it and has been running that place for 45 years, you know, talked about his life. He said, I feel like my life is a rowboat, you know.

I'm always looking backwards but moving forwards. And I was like, hmm, you know, it's not unlike this moment for creators. You know, you got to know what's happened behind. Yeah. But you keep going. Yeah. Because, you know, there's always a place, you know, you can't stay still, right? Yeah, and you don't know even when you're living through a good moment.

I mean, sometimes you do, but at a certain point, it's like you're just, the people who make stuff and they figure out a way to make stuff. That's right. Yeah. was the artist born of constraint and dies of freedoms. Because I can remember there was a period in docs where it was like, I'm not going to do a film for under, you know, two million or three million. That's just the way it is.

And then I remembered, like, there was supposedly a conversation between Louis Bunweil and Nicholas Ray in Spain at some point. And Bunweil, who had sort of learned how to save money by being a producer, was notorious for being very cheap and very efficient in his shooting. They used to call him Mr. Claspstick, because, you know, to edit his movies, all you do is you'd cut out the clapsticks. And then he'd send it to the lab, right? But he was telling Ray, who was very frustrated after he had done King of King,

he says, I just can't get my own movies made. He said, well, you know, maybe if you reduce your budgets by like 50%, you'd get them made. And Nicholas Ray said, nobody would ever respect me. you know, in the industry if I did that. It was kind of a deeply sad moment. And they both walked away from the dinner, like not understanding what the other person was thinking about or saying.

And it's hard because, you know, for documentaries at a certain moment, instead of being the person who had to pretend that they weren't really interested in documentaries in order to get hired, me. Yeah. Right? You know, suddenly you could walk around and actually, you could buy a house, you could think about sending your kids to college.

You know, there was a business, there was an industry that could support people without you having to do some other job in order to do the job you want it. On the other hand, you know, there comes a moment when if you really love what you're doing, you figure out a way to make it work. Yes. And screw the suits. Yeah. No, I totally agree, and it's weird. I identify with both people in that conversation. Like, I understand the feeling of I don't want to make sense.

something at any less of a resource level than the highest resource level I've ever participated in. But I also understand the viewpoint of, like, art is making it. Like, art is making it when it's hard. Art is doing it under constraints. Oftentimes, the money is a questionable gift. Do you know what I mean? Like, oftentimes the things you invent because you have to are just as worthwhile and vital as the things that are much better catered.

And it's funny, I always end up lost in these conversations raging, about the unfairness of the industry because there's a part of me that feels it, and there's a part of me that's just like, get to work. Right. That's right. So, what did we learn this week about surviving as the kind of lunatic

who wants to make things for a living? I think what I hear in Alex's story and in David Chases is that to survive a creative dark age, it helps to have a kind of pathological stubbornness. It also helps to be willing to do work you don't love while you wait for the chance to do the work you do. And there were the mercy of changes in business models

and audience expectations that are bigger than any one person. But that the people who make things make things. And that success for a lot of people I admire came a lot later than I would have expected. I did have one last question for Alex. We've established that podcasting is certainly in decline. TV is in decline. Documentary film is in decline.

Do you feel like America itself is in decline? Yes. Yes. America is in decline because the country's been ignoring all of the contradictions that have been gnawing at it for years and years and just pretending that they don't exist. And now they're catching everybody. Where do you think it goes? Look backwards and row forwards. I don't think I'm going to get a better answer than that.

Alex Gibney. His new documentary is called Wise Guy, David Chase and The Sopranos. You can see it on the channel formerly called HBO, Max, now. Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by me, PJ Vote, and Truthy Pinnaminani, and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Fact-checking this week by Holly Patton. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bizarian. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman and Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Perelo, and John Schmidt,

and to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Matt Casey, Mara Curran, Josephina, Frances, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff. Our agent is Orrin Rosenbaum at UTA. If you'd like to support the show and get access to our Incognito mode feed, with no ads, no reruns, and bonus episodes, head to searchengine.com. You can also submit a question for us there, whether or not your paid subscriber. Follow and listen to Search Engine for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.